A Little Range Time

Glock 17 9mm. Early Series

A friend of mine is a writer, and quite a good one, at that. He's retired, or at least retired from his previous job, and is applying himself to his writing on a pretty much full time basis. He's had a few small things published, but with a little luck it's just a matter of time before one of his books makes it into print.Actually, he has several books underway at the same time. I've read a few of his short stories, and although I'm certainly no expert on writing (I suspect you've guessed that already) I really enjoyed how he tells a story, and the way he puts his plots together.

How does this relate to range time, you ask? Well, one of his books, a detective thriller, involves a retired detective teaching a lady news reporter to shoot a hand gun. A cool twist is that she starts out as anti-gun, but circumstances convince her that being able to defend herself might not be such a bad idea after all. Anyhow, Richard, the writer, wanted to get in some hand gun experience with a Glock 17, since that was what was going to be used in the book. I took my 17 and my new 34C and met up with Richard over at the Holmes Harbor Rod & Gun Club. It was kind of dark and cold/clammy, but with the exception of one other shooter, we had the range to ourselves. The other guy was shooting, for the first time, his brand new custom engraved Smith & Wesson .460 revolver. Now THAT is a hand cannon! He won it at the Friends of the NRA dinner a while back.

I've been so wrapped up in work that I haven't been to the range since the last pin shoot of the year. Was that early November? Can't remember. Anyway, I knew I was going to be pretty rusty. I loaded up a few rounds and took four shots at the target 25 feet away, just to be sure the 17 was cycling OK. All four were in the black, in a nice tight less than one inch group? I kinda stood there with my mouth open in amazement. The guy with the .460 came over to watch, too. With the Glock's odd feeling trigger I considered a 3 or 4 inch group at that distance to be good shooting for me. Without saying anything, I decided to let Richard have at it. A little range safety review and then started loading some magazines for him to empty. Richard has been hunting and shooting rifles all his life, but has never spent much time with handguns. That being said, he did fine, and learned a lot about Glocks to go into his book. Then I tried the 34C to see how it shot. By then the target was getting pretty shot up, so it wasn't too obvious that I was all over the place! Richard gave it a try, and so did the .460 guy. By now we were starting to get cold, so we decided to head home and get warm.

At least I finally got in a little shooting. It's only two weeks to the first bowling pin shoot of the year ,and I better get in some (as in A LOT) of practice, or Evil Al is going to kick my butt all over the range........